David Hook, Manager, Operations Information and Configuration Management at MDA Space Missions provides this guest post in response to "New Graduates Ask Where the Jobs Are". David started out in a somewhat traditional role at his company and later branched out ... quite a bit!
Leaving the Library Part 1: From the Outside
So, you're a new information professional and looking for a non-traditional job? Well, here is the good news: there are plenty of companies out there that could use your skills. The bad news? Most of them don't realize that they need your skills, and if they do, they probably don't know where to find you. Your mission is to find them and let them know that you have the skills that they need.
One place where you are likely NOT to find non-traditional jobs posted is on library job boards. You are going to have to venture out further than that. If you are at college or university, visit some of the other faculties on campus and have a look at their job boards. If your school offers an MBA degree or has a business school, try starting with them. Another possibility is the computer science department. Or perhaps any other department where there might be some need for your skills. You never know what you'll find until you try.
A couple words of warning. First of all, be careful of faculties such as law, medicine or engineering where a professional accreditation is required to work in the industry. Not all jobs will be exclusively for those with the accreditation, but you are less likely to find something open to you than at, say, a business faculty where no accreditation is required.
Secondly, when applying, you need to be aware that you will be competing for these jobs against graduates from a different program. Does that mean that they are more qualified for the job than you are? Not necessarily. All it means is that they have a different skill set from you. If you are competing against MBA grads, for example, they may be stronger on business knowledge, but you will have stronger research skills. Be sure to play up your strengths and advantages.
Your Campus career centre can be a big help. Most of them keep profiles on companies that frequently hire from your university. Why not go through some of the profiles and look for knowledge-based companies that may not be posting for jobs at this time, but look like they could use someone with your skills. Put together your strategy to sell yourself and contact them.
Outside of the university, you can try setting up automatic searches at places like Workopolis or even Monster.com. Set up searches for terms like ‘research’ ‘competitive intelligence’ and so on – depending on the area in you are looking to move in to. Terms like ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’ may turn out to be too broad but ‘information management’ might produce some beneficial results.
Finally, consider sending your resume to recruiters (also known as headhunters) who place people in your desired area. This approach may work to your advantage, because then you will have the recruiter working on your side to sell your skills to a potential employer who may not have otherwise considered someone with your background.
It can certainly be a lot more work to find non-traditional library jobs than to just stick with what gets posted on the library job boards. But the reward for your extra work is that you open up your job search to much greater possibilities than before.
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